The leaderships of the political parties in Guyana talk a good democratic game but do very little to enhance the democratic processes in their own parties; give local people more control over their own lives and over those who claim to represent them nationally. We have already seen that although the Constitution demands it, local government elections have not been held for two decades and the processes by which the party lists for national and local elections are created and who will become MPs are clouded in mystery.
Of course, outside of the archaic, undemocratic foolishness usually referred to as democratic centralism, the members of modern political parties in liberal democratic countries are not usually the handmaidens of oligarchic party leaderships as they are in Guyana.
So far as the PPP is concerned, the toxic mix of democratic centralism, the natural oligarchic tendencies of political organisations and our ethnic context means that it is unashamedly alone in not having to bother too much about local organisational rebellion. It can talk about reform as much as it likes but one thing is
